Kasey Michaels (12 page)

Simon’s gut tightened at her words, which rekindled his anger, for he knew—did not understand why, precisely, but just
knew
—that the last thing he wanted was to see the back of this absurd creature as she walked out of his life. At least not just yet, not when he was caught between believing her to be an incorrigible infant and a unique, fascinating young woman. He also, thinking entirely selfishly, didn’t much enjoy contemplating the thought that he might then be spending all his time saving Caledonia Johnston from her own folly instead of doing what it was he had set himself to do. “Allow you to leave? That depends. If I were to set you and Mr. Plum loose, would you toddle off home, wherever that is, or would you still persist in your inane, insane attempts to blow a hole in the earl of Filton?”

“Of course I’d still be after him,” Callie answered frankly, and quite unknowingly sealing her fate—or at least her residence—for the next few weeks. “I only fib about unimportant things. This is important. I want to see the man suffer. He deserves it.”

“I thought as much.” Motioning her to a chair, Simon also sat down, crossing his legs at the knee. He’d have to take this slowly, one small step at a time. Smiling in what he hoped was an accommodating manner, he said, “However, as I’m somewhat in agreement with your sentiments about the man, although not with your method of punishment, I’m willing to listen to you. I’m also willing to tell you right here and right now that I have no intention of turning you and Mr. Plum over to the authorities.”

She snorted. Yes, it was definitely a snort. “I know that, my lord. If you were going to do anything so shabby, I’d be sitting in a gaolhouse somewhere even now. Which doesn’t mean that I trust you,” she added quickly. “Just that I’m not especially afraid of you.”

Not for the first time in the space of the past half hour, Simon felt thankful that he had sent Armand and Bartholomew packing. He’d rather not have Caledonia Johnston’s low opinion of his power to menace reach their ears. “Go on,” he urged for what felt like the tenth time. “Tell me everything. Please,” he added with an ingratiating smile, remembering his mother’s warning about flies and honey.

“I live in Dorset, on the North Downs, rather near Sturminster Newton,” she began, sliding her spine halfway down the back of the chair, obviously feeling at her ease as she settled in to tell her story. “Lester is our nearest neighbor and my very dearest friend. He’s completely innocent in all of this, as you’ve probably already deduced. He’s only come along to London to please me. Neither of our fathers knows where we are, and we’d really enjoy keeping them happy in their ignorance until we can return home on the mail coach at the end of the week or whenever our mission is accomplished. Have you ever ridden as an outside passenger? It’s invigorating, unless the weather turns damp. Now, tell me you won’t write to our fathers.”

“Agreed,” Simon said, trying to picture Caledonia Johnston riding atop a speeding mail coach, clinging to the rails as it careened wildly around tight curves in the roadway, loving every moment of her grand adventure. The image was entirely too clear. “Go on. How does Noel Kinsey have anything to do with a young lady from somewhere near Sturminster Newton?”

“He doesn’t. But he very much had something to do with my brother, Justyn, when Justyn came up to town last Season,” Callie explained, her eyes going cloudy with remembered pain. She leaned forward, eyeing Simon intensely. “You do know that the earl of Filton cheats at cards, don’t you? Ruins young men for their money, and sometimes simply for the sport of the thing, or so it’s said.”

“It has never been proven,” Simon pointed out, careful to appear only mildly interested in Callie’s declaration even as his thoughts shot forward, imagining he knew what she would say next.

She didn’t disappoint him. “Justyn was so young, so green,” she said, shaking her head. “He lost every penny, then became desperate enough to scribble out his vowels for another small fortune that our Papa, because he is an honorable man, felt it necessary to pay to Filton. He was so ashamed, Justyn was, that he ran away to India, promising to come back with a fortune—which is above everything silly, as he doesn’t have half my genius for invention, poor thing. I may never see him again. Papa is crushed with debt, so that I worry for his health and well-being. We had to dismiss most of the servants and raise the rents on the cottagers. With the loss of all that money, and the wet spring and all—we’re in terrible straits. And it’s all Noel Kinsey’s fault!”

“Which, in your tiny but loyal mind, is much easier than blaming the absent and well-loved Justyn for any of your troubles. Of course.”

She immediately bristled. “It was
not
Justyn’s fault!” Then she subsided, sighing into her cravat. “Oh, very well. So I’m angry with Justyn as well. I was furious at first, actually. But I love him and have forgiven him. He is, after all, my only brother. I
don’t
love Noel Kinsey.”

“So, not loving Filton, you decided to shoot him. How very, um, logical,” Simon concluded, wearily rubbing at his forehead. “And just what, pray tell, would that solve?”

Callie lifted her legs straight in front of her, about four inches off the floor, and began slowly slapping her boots together—a childish expression of impatience and frustration that seemed somehow understandable—which worried Simon not a little. “It wouldn’t really
solve
anything,” she said, lowering her legs once more, only to cross them at the ankle and begin her boot-slapping again as she looked down at her feet, then smiled up at Simon. “But it would make me feel so
good
to know that he’s suffering for what he did.”

And then, as if she had suddenly gotten the bit between her teeth and felt ready for a run, she uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees as she looked to Simon, her green eyes once more shining, alive with quite charming mischief. “I thought and thought, you see, planning my revenge. First, I considered dressing myself up like this and coming to London to play at cards with the bas—er, the man. But I didn’t have enough money for that. I also don’t know the first thing about playing cards other than what tricks Justyn taught me—and I already knew how much good those did
him
—so I had to rethink my plans. And then, last winter, when it was so damp, I watched my father limping about on his bad leg—the one he’d taken a ball in some years ago in that first trouble with Bonaparte—and inspiration struck. I’d shoot him!”

She sat back against the cushions once more, her smile, and the last of her bravado leaving her. “And it would have worked, too, if I hadn’t crawled into the wrong coach.”

That was true enough, Simon thought. She had crawled into the wrong coach. Into his coach. Which had been standing outside that particular gaming hell that particular night because he had been inside, taking the first steps in his own plan to bring Noel Kinsey low.

If there was such a thing as fate, he might begin believing that his and Caledonia Johnston’s lives were cosmically intertwined. Which was ridiculous.

“You’ll stay here until returning to Dorset,” he said before he could examine his motives, or his temporary insanity, in more than a cursory manner. “You and Plum both. Give me the address of your lodgings, and I’ll have someone fetch your belongings.”

“No.”

Well,
Simon thought,
at least she hasn’t gone immediately hysterical on me.
Just
no
. “The subject is not open to debate, Miss Caledonia Johnston,” he said, smiling as she shot daggers at him with those lively green eyes at his deliberate use of her given name. “It’s either that or the guardhouse for you and Mr. Plum. He’ll cause quite a stir in that pink horror, don’t you think?”

“Bounder! You said you wouldn’t do that!” she exclaimed, leaping to her feet, her cheeks paling.

“I lied,” he answered smoothly. “It’s a small thing, tricking you with a lie, but it satisfies me in some strange way. You deserve nothing more after kidnapping me last night.”

“You’d sink to petty revenge?” Her full upper lip curled into a sneer. “And your mother thinks you’re such a grand prize. Ha! A lot she knows, poor woman!”

Simon walked to the doors to the foyer and flung them wide, so that Emery and Roberts, who had both had their ears pressed to the painted wood, nearly tumbled to the floor inside the drawing room. “Escort Miss Johnston back to her chamber, Emery, if you please,” he ordered, as the butler flushed and busied himself in straightening the lapels of his coat. “And lock the door behind her. Now, where is the pink horror? I want him in my study within five minutes, or I’ll know the reason why.”

He turned back to Callie. “Your father’s first name, if you please, Caledonia. Come on, don’t dawdle. Or should I simply ask Mr. Plum? I merely have to dangle a chicken leg under his nose, I have a feeling, and I’ll have your entire life story in a twinkling.’

“Camber,” Callie bit out angrily as she sat down with a thump. “Sir Camber Johnston. But you can’t really mean to tell him what I’ve done? Even you wouldn’t be that mean to an old man.”

“No, I wouldn’t be that hard-hearted,” Simon admitted, the wheels inside his agile brainbox still turning at such a wild pace that he was considerably impressed at his own quick brilliance. “I am merely, with your permission, going to have my mother the viscountess pen him a note explaining your presence here at Portland Place for the remainder of the Season. Yours, and that of Mr. Plum, once I have gotten his father’s direction as well. She has a fertile mind for mischief, my mother, she’ll come up with some reasonable explanation. You see, Caledonia,” he ended, knowing his smile bordered on evil, “now that you at last appear willing to listen, and understand just who is in charge here, I am about to make you the happiest of women.”

“I wouldn’t marry you if you threatened to shoot me in
both
knees!” she exclaimed, obviously remembering his mother’s dotty conclusions.

“Now there’s a piece of good news to gladden my day,” Simon sniped, again aware of some disappointment in learning of her continued low opinion of him. Was he really such an ogre? “No, I had quite another treat in mind, if you will trust me to be your coconspirator?”

Callie tipped her head to one side, clearly reluctant, yet definitely interested, just as he’d hoped. “My coconspirator? In what way?”

“Why, in bringing Noel Kinsey to ruin, of course. It may seem a happy coincidence, but you and I were both in Curzon Street last night on the same mission, that of bringing the earl of Filton to his knees—in my case, only figuratively speaking. I have, for reasons you need not know, recently decided that he has abused his run of luck against callow youths like your brother and should be punished. Shooting the bounder is only a hit-or-miss affair, if you’ll pardon my poor joke. However, I very much like the idea of making the fellow suffer. Suffering, for instance, the way he would if you, Caledonia Johnston, were to find yourself betrothed to marry him.”

“
Betrothed
to him?”

Simon nodded, now the one with the bit firmly between his teeth and his mind galloping along quite nicely, thank you. “
After
you have been presented at a ball my mother shall hostess, and after he has been made to understand that you are a considerable heiress.
After
you have led him on a merry chase as I am convinced only you could do, pushing him near to distraction as you run hot and cold concerning your receptiveness to his affections, so that he is constantly at sixes and sevens. You could do that, Miss Johnston. If I know nothing else, I know that you have the capacity to drive even the sanest of men into stumbling insensibility.”

She rose to her feet once more and stood stock-still, like a doe surprised in a clearing, obviously intrigued, obviously becoming excited with his ideas. “Thank you. Um, at least I
think
that was a compliment. You really already have been planning to punish Filton? How can that be?”

“Another time, Miss Johnston,” he said, waving off her questions as he continued to pace, as the ideas kept percolating in his brain. “We’ll wave you and your dowry beneath the greedy Filton nose, and you’ll lead him on a merry dance. Which will make it even easier for me to relieve him of most of his fortune at the card table, so that he is prompted to scribble his vowels, as your brother did, all the while believing he can repay his debt to me out of your immense dowry once you two are married. Unlike your brother, you see, I am
very
good at cards. The more you lead him on, the deeper he’ll gamble.”

She passed over his compliment to his own prowess to ask, “What dowry?”

“The one we’ll invent, of course, Caledonia,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a faintly backward child. “Really, I thought you prided yourself on your resourceful turn of mind. Don’t disabuse me now, just at the gate, with the entire race yet to be run. Pay attention. Now, as I was saying, Kinsey will expect you to marry him and, by marrying him, save him from ruin when I call in his debts. Which you won’t do, jilting him most publicly—at Almack’s, perhaps?—so that the remainder of his creditors get wind of his ill fortune quickly and he ends, if we’re very, very fortunate, locked up for debt alongside many of his victims. Or he might flee to the Continent. Either result is acceptable.”

He stopped pacing, yet still feeling invigorated by his flashes of brilliance, and turned to look at Callie. “But you’ll have to be brought up to snuff, of course, which will take weeks of cooperation on my mother’s part. Wardrobe, hair, manners, the whole lot. You and dear Imogene will be very busy. Hard work, all of it, Miss Johnston, but all of it necessary. Now, what do you have to say to that?”

“Go to Almack’s?
Me
? Well, I suppose I could. I’m nearly nineteen, certainly old enough for Almack’s. Papa’s social position would allow it, and as your mother’s guest, an invitation probably could be arranged. Well, if that doesn’t beat the Dutch. But
me
—at Almack’s!” Callie’s eyes grew wide as saucers, and she sat down with a thump, nearly missing the chair and landing rump down on the floor. “I-I don’t know what to say.”